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description

The first and easiest change you can make to the category page template is addinga category description. Many themes, including PinBlack, automatically display thecategory description on the category page. You don’t even need to edit your theme.When you first create a category, it doesn’t have a description, but you can easilyadd one to the category record. Start by choosing Posts→Categories to see a listof all your categories, and then click the Edit link under the category you want toedit. Then type the category description in the Description box.TIP Although the Description box doesn’t give you the editing conveniences you get when editing a post ora page, you can still type in any HTML you want. For example you can insert <img> elements that show pictures,<a> elements that create links, and formatted <div> elements that use classes from the style.css file.

If you run a self-hosted site, you can make it even more attractive to Google andother search engines by using an SEO plug-in. But be warned, most SEO plug-insare an extreme case of overkill for the casual WordPress site-builder. Prepare to beswamped by pages of options and search settings.If you search WordPress’s plug-in repository for “SEO,” you discover quite a fewpopular plug-ins. One of the best is WordPress SEO by Yoast (http://tinyurl.com/seo-yoast). Its creator is WordPress über-guru Joost de Valk, who also blogs someuseful (but somewhat technical) SEO articles at http://yoast.com/cat/seo.Once you install and activate WordPress SEO, you see a new SEO menu in yourdashboard, packed with a dizzying array of options. You can ignore most of them,unless you want to change the way the plug-in works. The following sections explaintwo useful features you can tap into right away.

CREATING AN XML SITEMAP

After installing the SEO plug-in, your site gets one immediate benefit: an XMLsitemap. This is a document that tells Google where your content resides on yoursite. It ensures that all your posts get indexed, even if your home page doesn’t linkto them. Although you don’t need to give your XML sitemap another thought, youcan take a look at it by choosing SEO→XML Sitemaps and then clicking the XMLSitemap button. Needless to say, WordPress SEO updates your sitemap every timeyou publish a new post or page.NOTE The XML sitemap feature works only if you use descriptive permalinks that include post names (asexplained on page 116). If you use the stock ID-based permalinks, the plug-in won’t create an XML sitemap.

TWEAKING TITLES AND DESCRIPTIONS

The WordPress SEO plug-in also gives you control over two important details: thetitle and description (known to web nerds as the meta description) of each post orpage. These details are useful—even to SEO newbies—because Google displays themwhen it lists a page from your site in its search results. Figure 12-19 shows an example.

The title and description are also important because Google gives more weight tokeywords in those places than keywords in your content. In other words, if someonesearches for “dog breeding” and you have those words in your title, you can beatan equally ranked page that doesn’t.Ordinarily, the WordPress SEO plug-in creates a good title for a post, based on atitle-generating formula in the SEO→Titles & Metas section. This formula puts yourpost name first, followed by your site name, like this for the “crystal jasmine” post:Crystal Jasmine Named Tea of the Year – Magic Tea HouseHowever, you can customize the title before you publish the post using the Word-Press SEO by Yoast box, which appears on the Add New Post page (Figure 12-20).For example, it’s a good idea to shorten overly long post titles, and to replace cutesytitles with ones that clearly describe your content. You can also use the WordPressSEO box to type in a meta description.

The WordPress SEO by Yoast box also lets you run a pretend Google search so youcan see how your newly chosen title and description work. To do that, type the searchkeyword you want to test in the Focus Keyword box. Figure 12-21 shows an example.TIP For even more ways to optimize your site for search engines using the WordPress SEO by Yoast plug-in,check out the detailed tutorial at http://tinyurl.com/seo-yoast2.